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Reconciling dichotomies in higher education: Theoretical and practical implications of an interactive educational conception
Abstract
Recent decades have witnessed the growing emergence of a conception of higher learning as entailing the interaction of individual tendencies with physical and social conditions. The present study explores the theoretical and practical implications of this conception across several key areas of the literature, including higher education reform, critical thinking, moral education, college writing, and college teaching. Generally speaking, educational interactionism is the attempt to explain intellectual and moral growth in terms of the ongoing and reciprocal interaction of human beings and their physical and social environments. It accordingly seeks to reconcile the historical antipathy between inner-directed theories (rationalism, idealism, romanticism) and outer-directed theories (empiricism, positivism, essentialism) of human agency, meaning, and growth. In terms of educational practice, educational interactionism seeks to resolve the persistent tension between attention to students' individual needs and interests and the transmission of a socially viable body of subject matter. It does so chiefly by asserting that neither has any meaning without the other. In projecting this interactive conception across what are for the most part discrete literatures, the present study seeks to illustrate how similar principles operate across these areas and to encourage dialogue between them. It should be viewed as a first step in a larger effort to integrate and clarify the general features of an interactive educational conception, eliminate many present inconsistencies, and outline its implications for educational policy and teaching practice.
Subject Area
Education philosophy|Higher education
Recommended Citation
Brell, Carl D., "Reconciling dichotomies in higher education: Theoretical and practical implications of an interactive educational conception" (1991). Doctoral Dissertations Available from Proquest. AAI9120855.
https://scholarworks.umass.edu/dissertations/AAI9120855